E-voting suffers another setback in Switzerland

The Swiss government has decided to suspend efforts to enshrine electronic voting into the country’s law, but it plans to continue trials using improved systems.

A consultation among political parties and the 26 cantons, as well as a series of technical flaws in the current systems, has led the government to review its policy on e-voting.

The Federal Chancellor Walter Thurnherr said that the series of limited e-voting trials underway since 2004 will continue unless “citizens or politicians decide otherwise”, though he also acknowledged that public opposition has grown since the tide started turning against e-voting two years ago.

Nevertheless, Thurnherr claimed that the consultation procedure showed “support in principle for e-voting” and that the expatriate Swiss community in particular – which makes up about 10% of the electorate – had great hopes for the technology.

E-votingexternal link would complement the other two options available for Swiss citizens to use their direct democratic rights: the postal vote and going to the polls.

Thurnherr added that an audit of the only system currently available in Switzerland, operated by Swiss Post, would be evaluated over the next few months to see whether it can still be ready for the October 2019 parliamentary elections.